Okay, for those who don’t speak German, the title of the poem is “A Boat in a Bottle” and that’s the point, this is about doing just that… and the tension in trying a class project gone awry Not doing one but two things badly
In my sophomore year in Ms. Keefe’s German class we had to do something and describe it auf Deutsch My brilliant idea was to learn how to make a boat in a bottle
This may be a case where not following the directions Is the better path.
I have no idea what I wrote, what I told the class to do though I vaguely do remember some of these words “Sie schnitzen den Block des Holzes in die Form des Rumpfs des Bootes.” (You carve the block of wood into the shape of the hull of the boat.) And I remember desperately trying and laughing to find that dowling is dowling
The main thing I learned was Dieses Projekt erfordert Geduld. (This project requires patience.) And that is hard to do while demonstrating something you’ve never done before and speaking another language during the nice awkward time of puberty
July 16, 2006 14:05 1976 - Making a boat in a bottle, for my project to do a how to for German class http://perso.wanadoo.fr/michel.bardet/conseilsa.htm (and of course the site where I found the best instructions was a site in French “Bateaux en Bouteilles”). And back in 1976, we had no sites like - http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/text.html (I wish it was). You need to sand the wood dowling to a point. --- Sie müssen das Holz versanden, das zu einem Punkt dowling ist. You shape a piece of modeling clay to be the base and the waves of the water, to hold your boat. --- Sie formen ein Stück modellierenden Lehm, um die Unterseite und die Wellen des Wassers zu sein, Ihr Boot zu halten. You carefully pull the string so that the masts tilt into a vertical position. -- Sie ziehen sorgfältig die Zeichenkette, damit die Maste in eine vertikale Position kippen.